Monday, September 20, 2021

O zi deosebită pentru un om deosebit ...

Putere ... tenacitate ... caracter ... fermitate ... integritate ... – sunt doar câteva virtuți care îmi vin în minte când mă gândesc la mama ...

Mama nu a avut o viață ușoară – spune și ea asta cu orice ocazie care i se ivește...

Nu enumerez aici multele pete negre pe care i le-a aruncat viața în cale încă de când era copil și mai apoi și in anii de adult – cei care o cunosc bine știu povestea ei.

Azi vreau doar sa îmi amintesc de ceea ce ne-a învățat ea pe noi din experiența zilelor ei grele de peste timp, experiență care a format-o în cel mai puternic caracter pe care l-am întâlnit vreodată.

În fiecare moment in care mi-a fost greu in viață, în fiecare clipă când m-am găsit la o răscruce, la o cumpăna, am auzit mereu vocea mamei, aducând-mi mereu aminte să nu mă uit mai departe decât în mine însămi: ca un înțelept budist, mi-aducea mereu aminte că răspunsurile sunt în mine, în sufletul meu, în mintea mea, și nu mai departe ...

Mi-a adus mereu aminte că sunt echipată de la natură (de la ea, mai bine-spus) cu tot ce am nevoie, că sunt puternică și că voi face mereu o alegere bună pentru mine, pentru că sunt înzestrată cu exact ceea ce trebuie să „fac față la tot ce îmi este pus in cale”.

Când o întrebam dacă nu se teme de vreun șef, răspundea cu o seninătate și siguranță de sine de nezdruncinat: “Vai de mine! Dar ce au șefii in plus față de mine? Un titlu? Caracterul, știința și siguranța de sine nu stau într-un titlu! Avem amândoi o facultate, aceeași experiență, un creier, de ce să îmi fie frică?! De un titlu pe care azi îl ai și mâine, nu?”

Astăzi, peste mulți ani, îmi dau seama cât adevăr există în aceste cuvinte!

Ne-a insuflat mereu certitudinea că nu suntem „nici primele și nici ultimele care trec print-o încercare” – și așa prindeam curaj de fiecare dată pentru a merge înainte.

Așa ne-a învățat toată viața: că puterea, siguranța există în noi înșine. Ne-a învățat să credem in autosuficiență mai mult decât in orice,  ne-a învățat că suntem noi înșine in stare să răzbatem prin orice. Nu prin morală a făcut asta, ci prin exemplul ei, prin felul în care a răzbătut ea printr-o viață mult mai grea și amară decât a noastră ar fi putut fi vreodată.

Pe mine, personal, m-a învățat sa mă ascult – să ciulesc urechile la adâncurile ființei mele și să aud ce îmi spune: toate marele alegeri pe care le-am făcut vreodată le-am făcut ascultându-mă pe mine însămi, având siguranța   nu exista dilemă pe care să nu o pot rezolva singură.

Orice dram de curaj, orice credință, orice putere pe care le-am găsit vreodată în mine de-a lungul existenței mele le-am moștenit de la ea.

Dintre toate mamele din lume, poate nu a  fost cea mai “mămoasa” în sensul că nu ne-a alintat, și nu ne-a răsfățat la maxim, dar ne-a dat niște calități  infinit mai importante și de mai mare valoare decât alintul: încrederea în noi înșine, reziliența, curajul fără limite de a crede în puterile proprii, duritatea de a rezista în orice situație – toate acestea ne-au înzestrat cu o armură mult mai importantă și mai indispensabilă supraviețuirii unei vieți care s-a dovedit a fi, pentru noi, uneori nedrepte și alteori aspre, dar foarte adesea singure.

Astăzi, în  ziua când o celebrăm pe mama, cel mai important om de pe pământ pentru mine, simt în fiecare mușchi, în fiecare por, în fiecare celulă puterea și tăria pe care mi le-a transmis, și care vor rămâne și in mine cât timp mai exist.

Mom, nu aș fi putut ajunge nicăieri fără încurajările tale, fără sprijinul pe care ni l-ai dat, chiar și in detrimentul bucuriei tale, an de an, zi de zi, in modul tău tăcut, ferm, și nu in ultimul rând, puternic și impetuos de a fi.

O călăuză neclintită, un far luminos si neșovăitor, un exemplu de calm si putere – ne călăuzești mereu, oriunde ne-am afla, si oricâtă distantă fizică ar exista intre noi ... Ești parte din noi; te auzim, te purtăm și te simțim în fiecare bătaie a inimii; în fiecare respirație ...

Tot ce îmi doresc este să  te asculți pe tine însăți și să iți asculți propriul sfat de a continua să răzbați prin orice durere, si orice obstacol. Astfel, mergând mereu înainte ( „că înapoi nu se mai poate”), să continui să fii cu noi multe, multe, toamne de acum înainte, să ne bucuri cu înțelepciunea ta nesfârșită, lucidă și calmă, să te știm aproape mereu și să ne amintești mereu că totul se poate … pentru noi, dar mai ales, pentru tine.

Te iubim, mom!

Cu mulți ani și multe speranțe înainte ...


Această fotografie e în ziua nunții mele (2010). Mă bucur că o zi atât de importantă și scumpă pentru mine i-a putut oferi mamei ocazia unui zâmbet. Se întâmplă mai rar ... 


Saturday, September 11, 2021

Where Are We Now? After 20 Years.

Random thoughts on the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks ... 

20 years ago today I was in my parents’ kitchen in Romania, watching with stopped breath and open mouth the horrors of the 9-11 attacks. I lived in the US at the time but I was on vacation for two weeks, visiting my family in Romania. I had climbed to the top of one of the Towers less than two years earlier and when I saw that plane hit it all I could think about was how massive a number of people that meant would be dead! You knew when you saw those sky-scrapers how many thousands of people it housed. I could not imagine what would happen to them now. When the buildings collapsed, the unknown faces of those thousands of people kept playing in front of my eyes like a morbid slideshow. Unstoppable. Horrific.

Another thing hit close to home for me: when I watched the towers collapse, the anchors repeated the names of the flights that had been hijacked and they kept saying that the flights had taken off from the  Dulles airport in DC. I realized that that was the airport where my flight to Europe had taken off only days earlier. I had chills down my spine: I was in the same airport as those terrorists! Oh, God! Could that have been me on those planes? Everyone who has ever flown could have related to that fear but especially those, like me, who were in-between planes at that time, knowing full-well, they’d have to brave another flight to make it home.

Lots of people died that day – at The Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania, too, but for some reason the collapse of those two towers is what stopped the hearts and the breathing of an entire planet! As you watched the images on TV  of people jumping out of the windows of The Twin Towers towards their sure death, repeatedly, ad nauseam, you could feel how every soul of the world was looking for someone else’s hand to clutch, for someone, anyone, to hug, to ensure they are not alone and not abandoned in that vacuum of sheer pain. You could feel that everyone who had any heart left felt the same horror and the same grief, and the same anger as you felt. This was the togetherness people are talking about now, that we should be awaken to … the togetherness that we all need, as humans, as compassionate beings when times get tough.

I remember as if it were yesterday my first two thoughts after watching the events unfold: first, I was thinking that the US will never allow me to get back to my home which at the time was Greensboro, NC. I was not a citizen yet. I had gotten my temporary Green Card just the year before, so I was for sure not going to be allowed in the country – the announcements that the US does not allow anyone but citizens to return to the US was made by many  US Embassies in many countries including in Romania  almost immediately after the attacks. I remember this scared me terribly as moving to America was my life-long dream. My husband was in the US and my new life, the way I had built it. My hopes for the future were all here, in the US. I was terrified this one act of terrorism would kill my future for me, my life-long work and would ground me in Romania.

The second thought was “oh, man, America will first get together and pray after this. That’s what they do: they first, pray. But man, after that, they will be pissed! They will crush whoever did this. I feel sorry for them.” We did not know right from the beginning who had done this. I was sure, though, this was another country, another power, not the US. I knew a war would be coming but never in my worst dreams did I think that war would span for the next 20 years! I knew whatever war was coming would be brutal, given the 20th century’s advancement in arms, and I feared what that’ll do to the world and to each of us, individually. I was wondering if we would be able to travel freely anymore, if I would be able to come back to Romania and see my family there, in the future, if America was going to wage war on … whoever did this … and involve other powers in this war as well?!

America did pray right after September 11. Country-wide vigils and charity concerts abounded. Charity to 9-11 victims sprouted everywhere. People looked up to the heroes of 9-11. Everyone swore they would never forget.

Giuliani, the Mayor of New York at the time of the attacks, became “America’s Mayor.” For all his faults, lies, and illegalities, for all of his Republicanism, my liberal friends loved him and touted his accomplishments and how he brought the city, the first responders together and what an incredibly great job he did handling the aftermath of this tragedy. How can you handle it, really?! But that, he did. After that, it seemed like we, as a people, were not divided in camps, anymore – albeit very briefly. The lines that separated us because of different political views, different tax views and views on how one should handle the economy and what it means to be patriotic faded. We were all thinking as Americans, together in one common thought: “who did this to us? They would pay dearly. Let’s hold out hands together and pray for those that we lost. Let’s be together. It hurts less when we’re holding hands.” – it looked as if we were saying …

As I was in Romania, my US friends, coworkers, and relatives flooded me with messages of “come back home, safely”, “how are you?”, “what do people say there?” (meaning in Europe, in Romania). I never felt alone. I was with one half of my family, my blood half, but my other half, the one I had chosen for myself, was hailing back, not forgetting me, from across The Pond. For all our differences, we were all one. And I am sure that what brought us together was not our true belief that all of a sudden Giuliani was  a nice guy and Bush stopped being an idiot overnight, but  that need for togetherness in front of horror, that need for holding another’s hand to cross the dark pit left in front of us by those planes going down. That simple, human, vulnerability, unaccounted for by much fanfare or glamor, but our simpleness as humans that needed to be held …

I have always believed that what sets Americans apart from many other nations is their individualism – their obsession with themselves, their lack of awareness that they are not alone in the world, that the consequence of their actions affects others. But during those days, I saw an America where people stopped for just a minute and started to be aware of their neighbor’s pain, of their neighbor’s loss, of their ability to help or be compassionate. All because it could have happened to any of us.

The US did allow me to get back – they opened the borders for US citizens and Green-Card holders alike in the following days. I remember boarding my flight from Germany at the time and military American personnel with automatic guns were supervising the boarding. They made us empty all of our carryon bags, and even questioned whether we were hiding explosives in our (film) cameras, they body-searched us (a first of many, many others to come), and questioned us for hours before they allowed everyone to board. It was terrifying and reassuring at the same time.

But it was then, in Germany, only about 10 days or so from September 11, when the American individualism showed itself again: people were frustrated and angry that they were being searched. How dare they think I’m a terrorist?! Completely missing the point! Although there were American soldiers flanking the departure gate, although a United Airlines flight (the same airline whose planes had been hijacked 10 days earlier!) was waiting at the gate, Americans were upset that they are treated as if they were terrorists. To me, this was reassuring. To everyone else, it was an infringement to their freedom, forgetting that what the military was protecting was precisely that freedom.

Ever since, I wonder: when we do say we come together in times of crisis, do we really come together, or do we say that as some sort of a slogan that just sounds well; as some sort of generic statement that we know sounds good, but which does not truly come from the heart?!

And do we really come ever together, despite all cost to us? Or do we come together when and if it’s convenient to us? When it’s not infringing on our freedom?! Is patriotism not a selfless display of altruism? A complete abandon of the “I” in favor of protecting the “many”?

20 years later today, people all over the internet are saying we need to remember how we came together then. We need to remember how, despite all of our differences, we all have a common goal – that of being free, protected, and that of ensuring we all live in peace. This is all true. But do we even really believe that we can strive for that common goal anymore?

I have felt so defeated and so alone in the past few years, the whole country growing angrier, and more violent, more inconsiderate, more careless, and more disconnected, that I really don’t see how we could ever think of the other selflessly, and purposefully taking our own person from the equation. What’s worse: I don’t think we can even acknowledge another’s merits, when we see them as different in any way than us. I feel like the first thing we do nowadays is look for differences between us and not commonalities.

Some folks are saying today that they pray that we can see again our togetherness from 20 years ago before another tragedy happens to remind us how we can be all one and be there for one another. But has that tragedy not already happened? Have the past 5 and 2 years (and before that, even!) not been anything but an ongoing tragedy, and open wound, bleeding, for all of us, and we still, don’t see one another?! More than 650,000 people died of Covid alone in the past year and a half. Add to those people who died of hate crimes in the past few years, people who died in wildfires and hurricanes, people who died from hunger and lack of medicine because of lack of healthcare, just to name a few … Those are infinitely more (possibly preventable) deaths than the ones we saw at 9-11.

When the cameras are off and the social media sleeps (does it ever?) and we’re not trying to fit in with the rest of the world by saying what everyone says (“we’re in this together”, “we’re one”, etc), when we dive deep into our heart, do we ever really feel like we did then, when we watched the towers collapse for the first time: do we feel in the dark for another hand to clutch on? For another person to be close to us so we can share the grief? Or do we stubbornly believe that “I” is enough in this mad world?

I believe we too often forget that grief hurts the same whether you’re this nationality or another, of this political belief or of another. Grief sees no color, no sex, no culture, no age, no country … Somehow, we have become blind to that.

What elevates us as humans, what we all (should) seek now more than ever is that simple, heartfelt, visceral togetherness of not being alone in the face of grief, horror, and pain. What brings us together is that first instinctual thought of “oh, God, can that be me out there?”  - that is where true compassion springs from (“Do onto others as you would have them do unto you …”): that however dark a tragedy is, it could happen to any of us. So, step with care …

Can we find that now deep, deep into our souls? Not because it sounds good or it looks good under a hashtag, but because we truly filter the tragedies of the world through our hearts and we know how it would feel if it were us?! Can we do it?! Or are we too shallow and clueless in our ivory towers to allow us to even ask these questions anymore?!

I am not trying to belittle the 9-11-2001 attacks. Saying they were horrid, unnatural, and mind-stopping is an understatement. But what I am trying to say is: we should pay attention to our every day and just re-learn to be human again, the very same way we were so painfully reminded that we are human on that dark day in history.

I hope humanity is not completely lost and I hope that one day soon we would wake it before all is lost. Because this is the only thing that might get us through the pain that is here now.